Pound Cake For Saint Expedite
by The Cry-Wank Kid
Summary: At odds with the witches, Michael has descended to the underworld. The coven sends Nona, a witch well-versed in Descensum, to find him there. This takes place after 8x8, if Michael had descended to hell instead of running to the woods.
1. Chapter 1

Nona's mid-back length ponytail lay on the hairdresser's counter, lifeless but still warm. Gallant's long hands dusted her shoulders as he grinned behind her in the mirror.

"Like it?"

The hair still attached hung crisp and glossy to just below the young woman's jaw. Center-parted bangs framed her face, falling to the sides of her cheekbones like wings.

"Perfect," Nona said. She unzipped her black leather purse and pulled out a lipstick, applying it in the mirror to her mouth. "It's just what I wanted."

She stood, tossing the long strap of her purse over her shoulder. Walking to the register, she felt light and determined. The weight of her long hair still called to her from the hairdresser's station, heavy with emotion and death. Nona couldn't get away fast enough.

"Who did you say this guy was again," Gallant asked, swiping her card. "The one you're looking for?"

"Michael," she said. "Michael Langdon."

Gallant smiled tenderly, eyeing Nona's exposed neck. "Well be careful out there," he said. "This town, you know? City of the dead."

Nona exited the salon's double doors, annoyed by the hairdresser's words. City of the dead, indeed. Did he not know where _she_ came from?

Were she still in New Orleans, Nona could have escaped to the cemetery, loamy with above-ground tombs, leaving wishes and Saralee pound cake in the small cathedrals with their statues of saints. She could have slipped, like a small cat, unnoticed into an overgrown mass of fallen city, invisible in black among the chaos and decay. But this was Los Angeles. Its very neatness, its newness, unnerved her.

Walking to meet Cordelia, she felt conspicuous against the sunny, bright strip. She was twenty-seven years old; a slender, long-limbed five-foot-seven, dressed in a simple black shift dress that fell to just above her knees and just below her elbows. The dress's neckline tied into a long, floppy knot, the same solid black as her tights. White basket-weave sandals stood in contrast to the rest of the outfit and afforded her an extra two inches of height with their square, blocky heels.

She reached the building and used a key card to let herself in, riding the elevator up several floors to the hotel suite where the Supreme was staying. Nona's bright shoes clicked, echoing, against the off-white, gold-flecked formica of the hallway. She'd known better than to jokingly suggest the Cortez. That might have been funny before what happened to Queenie, but it certainly wasn't a laughing matter now.

The fact that Queenie had returned to them--that it was Michael who ended up retrieving her--only served to make the subject even sorer for Cordelia. In her darkest heart, Nona sometimes wondered if the Supreme might have rather had Queenie stuck for eternity playing Go Fish with the ghost of James Patrick March.

"Delia?"

Nona let herself in, glancing around the spacious suite until Cordelia emerged from the bedroom, dressed in a floor-length black sundress. "Oh," she said first, "your hair."

Nona widened her brown eyes. "You don't like it?"

Cordelia came closer, surveying the pale face of her former student. Many of Robichaux's alumni were came from show-business stock and Nona was no exception: the granddaughter of a cult horror-film star from of the 1950s. Like her grandmother before her, she wasn't exactly a conventional beauty. She had a somewhat aqualine nose, a small mouth, and her long arms and legs gave her a mildly lanky appearance. But she was lean and well-proportioned, with large eyes, a delicate jawline, and a thick, shiny head of dark hair.

"No," mused Cordelia, gingerly touching one freshly clipped end, "no, I do. It suits you. I just wasn't expecting it."

Nona shrugged. "You know what they say, right? If it holds you back here, it'll hold you back down there."

"Yes, well..." said Cordelia curtly, pressing her hands together and averting her eyes from Nona. She walked to the center of the suite's main room and sat down on the white leather couch. "I trust you know why I chose you for this particular mission..."

"Besides the fact that I met his father? Well, not exactly his _father,_ I guess..."

 _The Joseph of Satanism_ , Nona thought abruptly. _The Joseph of Satanism is the ghost of a school shooter from the 90's. Blond and pretty. A little annoying. He cries a lot._

But she sat, both women knowing what Cordelia actually meant. Nona was a witch of average-to-good ability. She couldn't pass all seven wonders, but one in particular was her specialty. _Descensum_. Nona could slip in and out of the underworld with uncanny ease, and the force of its horror and despair didn't affect her as severly as it did other witches.

"You didn't have the pleasure of meeting Michael Langdon when we tested him for the supremacy..."

"No," she said with a smirk, "but if he's anything like his earthly father..."

"Nona, now is not the time to become overconfident," cut in Cordelia sharply. "I need you to be prepared, okay? This isn't some morbid little jaunt. Langdon may sense your power, your natural immunity to hell, and want to undermine it." She stopped, reaching for a water bottle from the glass coffee table and drinking. "Something tells me that he won't much like us encroaching on his turf."

Nona hung for a moment on the sense of unease in the room. Not wanting to be argumentative this time, she spoke: "What's he doing down there, anyway?"

Cordelia shook her head. "I don't know for sure. Hiding out. Biding his time. I'd thought that burning his allies at the stake might weaken him enough to bring him close to us, but I fear it only brought him closer to his own sense of destiny." Her eyes clouded, taking on a far-off gaze. "Destruction..."

Nona put a hand on the older woman's wrist for a moment, then awkwardly pulled it back. "And you think he can be reasoned with?"

"I think it's worth a try," Cordelia answered. "There's humanity in him, I saw it. And he's young."

"And if I can't get him to turn from the darkness?"

"Then at very least make sure he isn't causing too much havoc. I fear that he could make new allies in the underworld, more powerful ones. Papa Legba, for example, or worse. Just... don't be too much of a hero down there, okay? If he can't be reasoned with then take note of him, what he's doing, and report back to us. Understand?"

Nona nodded. Cordelia hesitated for a moment before reaching out and running a careful hand down the side of Nona's cropped hair. "God... I remember when you first came to us."

Nona laughed. "Fresh out of Murder House. I was fourteen. My parents came home and found me levitating on the bed, surrounded by Doctor Montgomery and his wife. Jesus, that place wanted me. It probably would have had me, at that age, if they didn't send me away."

"Attuned to the darkness, even then," mused Cordelia. "Look, Nona, I know I may have been hard on you at times...,

 _Because I didn't need you?_ Nona thought. _Because I refused to cry on your shoulder like the other girls did?_

"...But I don't want to lose you. I don't want to see you get stuck down there, or worse. Please be careful."

"Of course," said Nona quietly. She hesitated. "Well then..."

"If you're ready..."

Nona nodded. She smoothed her dress and lay supine on the suite's white carpet, shutting her eyes to feel the familiar darkness break through.


	2. I Don't Want to Miss a Thing

_Spiritu duce, in me est..._

Michael liked the echoing sound of his black dress shoes on the hallway's cold floor and the feeling of sliding his palm idly over the passing doors. Like Nona, he knew the truth of the underworld: it wasn't an unbearable, communal fiery pit, but a leery place filled with general darkness and vice. That was the main part, where malevolent deities and other such beings roamed. Behind the doors in the hallway were the personal hells, the truly foul places where most banished human souls resided. It gave Michael great satisfaction to know that he could wander into any such one at will.

 _Deduce me in tenebris vita ad extremum, ut salutaret inferi..._

He might have done just that had he not been interrupted by a sharp prickly feeling just behind his eyes. He pitched forward, pinching the bridge of his nose with one hand. His Ms. Mead had always told him that leaning forward when he had a nosebleed only made things worse, but the prickle-combined with the new ringing in his ears and faint copper taste in his mouth- overpowered reason.

 _Descensum._

"The fuck," Michael muttered, righting himself as the ringing subsided and surveying the circular, weeping spots of blood dotting the floor by his shoes. He searched the pockets of his black dinner jacket for a handkerchief but came up short. No matter. Instinctively he knew what the sudden symptom signified. Someone foreign had entered the realm, someone who didn't belong there, and he had a pretty good idea as to whom.

He tilted his head back, tasting blood. The small reminder of Ms. Mead, and what the witches did to her, had made him momentarily sad. This only served to make him even angrier with Cordelia's coven. He wiped the blood from beneath his left nostril with the back of his hand and resumed walking, no longer bothering to run his palm across the endless row of doors. When he came to the right one, he'd know. Of that, Michael was certain.

* * *

The ceiling beams were papered in red and pink steamers, shiny heart-shaped balloons stuck in place and danging curled ribbon. That was the first thing Nona saw when she opened her eyes, her vision adjusting momentarily to the low-lit, foggy air.

Dizzy, she propped herself up on her elbows and slowly pulled herself upright. "Really?" she asked out loud, taking stock of the particular flavor of personal hell she'd been given this time. Nona felt her pulse quicken, fight or flight in her veins. "Fucking really?"

Her voice, rawer and shriller than she'd intended, echoed off the walls of the gymnasium. No one reacted.

She breathed in through her nose, deep and slowly. _Langdon's playing hardball,_ she thought. Her hands curled into fists at her sides, her shoulders rolled back. _I knew to expect this. I knew._

Facing her, out on the makeshift dance floor, children swayed slowly in pairs, the girls' hands on the boys' shoulders and the boys' on the girls hips

 _'I could stay awake, just to hear you breathing...'_

"No..." Nona moaned, steeling herself against the familiar opening lines of the song. The syllable felt like a mantra, a breathing rhythm, which she latched on to. "No, no, no, no, no..."

"Outside..." a quiet, even voice appeared behind her. It was almost a purr. "Always on the outside looking in..."

She didn't need to turn around.

"Tell me..." implored the voice. From the feel of his breath on her neck he seemed to be slowly circling her. For a moment she regretted her haircut. "It was your twelfth birthday. Valentines day..."

Nona exhaled. She knew that if she chose to own the memory, Langdon couldn't use its power to the full effect. "No one danced with me," she answered flatly. She kept her eyes trained straight ahead at the facsimile of pain projected before her. She remembered the faces that the demons falsely wore. She could have called each child by name. "That was the first time I ever felt a certain, particular kind of sadness. Deep in my chest, burning like hot water."

"Weep..." the voice behind her whispered. "Weep for yourself, if the tears will come..."

"Not for you, asshole." All at once she turned around and pushed him, a quick blur of dark-golden hair in her face.

"No," said Michael knowingly. "Of course not."

The simple statement must have been tailor-made to hurt just enough to disarm her, because in an instant she was out in the center of the floor, his hands upon her hips. Nona realized then just how afraid she was to see the young man's face-but why? No, she decided, that didn't matter now, what mattered was her agency. So she wove her arms more closely over his shoulders and hid her own face in his neck. She could smell his clean jacket, the rose-tinged detergent scent of his hair.

"Pathetic, really," he hissed in her ear, swaying her in tune with the song. "A middle-class girl whose worst trauma was, what? Feeling left out in middle school? Who are you?"

"My name is Nona Weston," she said tensely. "And I don't want to hurt you. I'm just here to talk to you. Is this hell the worst _you_ could do?"

In truth, Michael hadn't had any hand in creating their current surroundings. Such hells were randomly generated, it seemed, by a force that neither party quite understood. But he was too proud to admit this.

Again, though, he felt the impending prickle behind his eyes, again the ringing sound and the growing taste of copper in his throat. Michael resented that a witch could have such an effect on him, even by accident; and if it was in fact an accident then he didn't want to give her the satisfaction of knowing about it. Mortifying, he thought, to do something so human as bleed.

"There's nothing left to talk about," he said bitterly, vanishing from the dance floor. Nona nearly fell over face-forward. She steadied herself, making sure she was alone, and then ran.

* * *

"Snake eyes!"

An eight-foot diety with a cow's head, an enormous gold ring in its snout, pushed a pile of gambling chips towards the young blond with the nosebleed. Michael's feet were propped up on the table. He leaned back in his chair, relishing the burn of the liquor he sipped although he knew it would have no effect on him. The partially dried blood on his upper lip gave him a daring look, he hoped.

Behind him, a smoky cartoon world played out, full of shrouded figures and bipedal animal beings with enormous flat black eyes. Michael grabbed a cigarette from one and inhaled, releasing the smoke after seconds. He didn't know how long he'd been in the speakeasy for, just that it felt safe to him. He had no use for poker chips or money, but he liked using his powers to win at the games over and over. And he could have things down here that Grandma-or even Ms. Mead, after Grandma was gone-would never have allowed him at home.

Across the long table, a shrouded sheet-ghost of a creature, all long rubbery legs and black-hole eyes, grumbled at the win. Michael's pale eyes narrowed, causing the being to burst into flames and then vanish. He waited for the satisfying feeling of its essence disappearing from the air around him. He reached over and put the lit cigarette out.

"My my," said a strangely accented voice behind him. "Looks like somebody getting too big for his britches."

Michael turned to see a man in a top hat, long hair dreadlocked and skin ashy gray. "Who the fuck are you?" he demanded.

"Now now," teased the man, "is that any way to talk to a diety?"

"You tell him, Papa!" cackled the stout girl at his side. She had long, straight brown hair and wore a collared black dress. She resembled Michael's Aunt Addie, of whom he'd seen pictures in his first home. But he knew that it couldn't be her. The expression was different, and Grandma had told him that Addie was in heaven. Not here.

"You're rude," remarked Michael. "I own this place. My father-"

"-I know your father well," said Papa Legba. "And he don't give out nothing for free. From what I can see, Michael Langdon, you're part of a prophecy that ain't been fulfilled. You, pretty boy, don't own shit yet."

He reached into his ashy jacket and brought out an oily black rag, offering it to Michael and smugly gesturing to his nose. "By the way, you've got a little..."

Michael slapped his hand away, but Papa Legba looked unphased. "Trial by fire," he said. Behind him, two double doors swung open wide, creaking on their hinges to reveal a street of cold, foreboding gray. A hollow wind blew there, echoing through the eerie, empty quiet. "We'll see if you're fit to be seated at the left hand of your father."

The diety smirked as the crowd in the speakeasy parted and the young man disappeared out into the void. "Everybody suffer," Papa Legba said.


	3. How is your father, son?

**a/n: This chapter is a bit dark. Content warnings here for self harm, school shootings, and sexual abuse.**

* * *

The gray ghost town reminded Michael of the old black and white Westerns that Grandma used to show him on TV. The road between the two rows of uniformly empty buildings was unpaved, dusty and wide. He kept waiting for someone or something to pop out and torment him and grew agitated when nothing did. Even torment, Michael thought, would be better than nothingness.

"Fucking fine," he finally muttered, picking a rock up from the center of the dirt road, "I'll do this the hard way..."

Michael used the rock to draw a large circle around himself, then filled it in with lines to make an inverted pentagram. He collapsed to his knees in the center, realizing how hot and dry this gray place was. All the dust was irritating him, making his throat hurt.

"Father!" he called to the nothingness, hearing his own voice echo through the empty, hollow streets. "Father, I want to serve you! But you have to tell me what you want me to do!" Michael picked up a particularly sharp rock and pulled his sleeve up, digging the rock into his arm for a blood offering. But even when it did break the skin, his own flesh taunted him by closing up immediately. Michael threw the sharp rock in frustration.

"Please!" he called hoarsly into the void. "Please, just tell me something, anything, and I'll do it! _Anything!"_ He crumpled forward, hugging himself. "Please..."

After some amount of time the lamb appeared. It looked soft and clean and Michael straightened, eyes growing wide in the creature's glowing light. It struck him as beautiful for an instant before making him horribly angry.

He lunged for the animal before a man flickered behind it, two-dimensional and halfway translucent. Michael stopped. There was something about the man's unblinking eyes that he couldn't stand to look at for more than a few seconds at a time. It was like going somewhere in the car during sunset, driving straight into the West. Too much light.

The translucent man raised a hand, revealing a a hole in his palm in the shape of a crimson star. "Awake, O sleeper," he whispered, "and rise from the dead..."

"I'm... not... _yours!"_ cried Michael, furious, but when he stumbled forward only the lamb was left. He grabbed it by the throat and picked the jagged rock back up, no tolerance left inside of him for soft and lovely things.

When he looked down the lamb had become a black goat, so Michael killed that instead. It felt good until half a dozen more appeared, swarming him slowly. He stepped out from the circle he'd drawn, suddenly too dizzy to run. His lower legs felt heavy and stars appeared at the edges of his vision.

 _"Father!"_ he called, swaying, as it tunneled to black.

* * *

When he came to he was somewhere else, huddled under a table in an outdated school library. Michael immediately knew where he was. Though he hadn't been there, he had imagined it many times. He had seen it in his dreams.

He heard the sound of boots on carpet in the quiet distance and somebody whistling a tune. Then all at once, a gunshot.

"Father," he repeated, a whisper to himself.

The footsteps and the whistling came closer, until a pair of combat boots appeared in front of the table where Michael hid. The shooter crouched then, silent, a pair of big dark eyes staring out from a face even younger-looking than Michael's own.

"Dad..." Michael whispered, reaching out his hand. In his heightened state he couldn't tell if he was trembling with fear or excitement. "Take me with you, please. I'll help you kill them."

Tate recoiled. "You're fucked up," he said indignantly, as if Michael were the one in the middle of committing mass murder.

"I love you," Michael whispered. "Please..."

Tate cocked his gun and positioned it so that Michael could see down the barrel. "Not even I could create something as evil as you," he said. Then he pulled the trigger.

* * *

When he opened his eyes next he was in his childhood bed at his grandmother's house. But he wasn't alone. Unlike the last scene, this was a true memory, one that Michael was now being forced to relive.

His body was different now, taller and stronger than it had actually been, but it made no difference. Michael still hated the way that the babysitter was touching him.

The first nanny he had killed for fun, that was true. Hurting her had felt good, and Michael had been too young to understand or care about anything but that. But the second one did bad things to him, things that made him feel sick. After three or four times the revulsion in his body and the anger inside of him had grown to be too much. Just like now.

His face was splattered with the woman's blood when Grandma appeared in the doorway. _"Michael!"_ she shrieked, her face crumpling. _"What have you done now?!"_

"Grandma," he panted, "I can explain, please. Please don't punish me..."

And she had, in reality. In his recollection of the real event, Michael received the spanking of his lifetime followed by several hours solitary in the closet of mirrors. But now reality deviated, his grandmother calming instantly. He noticed a glass of water in her hand.

"There now," she said, coming closer to sit beside him on the bed. He noticed her voice was still shaking. "There now, my remarkable boy... a glass of water, a nice glass of water is all that you need..."

A sudden sense of dread gripped Michael. He didn't want the cup, but he was sick to death of Grandma's tears. He was sick of looking out the upstairs window and seeing her digging, of dirt under her painted nails; he was sick of the death-scent of roses. Maybe, he thought, she was right.

"Here now," she repeated, pressing the cup into his hand. Hers were dusty from the garden, smelling of earth. "It's all you really need..."

He drank.

* * *

To say he awoke next would be slightly inaccurate. His consciousness returned. Again he felt the worn-in creak beneath him, the twin-size mattress that was Tate's before it was his. Again there was the scratchiness of the crocheted afghan pulled up over his face and the stifling warm of the old heater; again the scent of earth and roses. But he was alone now. He tried to open his eyes but couldn't.

His body was no longer his home. His legs and arms no longer responded to his frantic brain's commands; they felt cold and heavy, full of pins and needles. His mouth was Sahara-dry and tasted chemical. He couldn't swallow.

 _I cannot cry, laugh, move or speak,_ Michael thought. _No one's coming. I cannot, I cannot. I am not. It's done._ With a terrible resignation he tried hard to will the last of his consciousness away.

But he couldn't. Instead, after a terrible period of time he felt a hand pull the cover from his face. On instinct he tried to open his eyes again, and could this time. He never would have thought he'd feel relieved to see Papa Legba, but now the man's hovering visage in the dark room made him almost giddy.

Papa smirked and held a hand out. Michael took it, surprised that his body now worked again. As he rose from the bed with the gray diety, he heard the faint chime of girls' voices somewhere in the distance, singing a hymn.

 _One bright morning, when this life is over_

 _I''ll fly away_

 _To that home on God's celestial shore_

 _I'll fly away..._


	4. I'll Fly Away

**a/n: Oh boy, another disturbing chapter! This one mentions miscarriage and is a little graphic. So be warned**

* * *

 _I'll fly away, oh glory_

 _I'll f_ _ly away_

 _When I die, hallelujah by and by_

 _I'll fly away..._

The song echoed off the tile walls, the crisp thin voices of a choir of young girls. Nona knew the song and the familiar beige tile of the middle school's bathroom, but she didn't remember the hallway being so long.

Finally she reached the stalls and mirrors, though now they too didn't quite match her memory. There were more of them, at once self-contained and stretching seemingly forever. Nona found a corner and touched up her lipstick, smoothing her hair with shaky hands.

She knew that Cordelia wouldn't be worried yet. In addition to being less susceptible to the clutches of hell, she could also stay descended far longer without the threat of disintegration. The Supreme knew this. With the way things were going, though, Nona wondered if she might beat her own record this time.

The bathroom's overhead lighting made her look pale and tired. She rummaged through the small purse over her shoulder, suddenly desperate to cover the circles she saw beneath her eyes. But when she looked up again the mirror burst into flames.

Nona startled, turning around in sudden fear that someone had seen. This caused the trash can in the near corner to spontaneously ignite, too.

"Look what she did!" The girl in the plaid-and-navy uniform was shorter than her now, so much younger, but Nona gasped anyway. "She's evil!"

"No..." Nona urged, "No, I didn't, I didn't mean to..."

"Evil, she's evil!" A small chorus of others had appeared now, too, behind the first classmate. Through the walls, the familiar hymn still echoed, sung in a maddening jump-rope-rhyme loop.

"Why do you even go here?" the first girl demanded. "Your family's not even Christian. I heard your parents have sex parties and sleep with other people!"

"I heard she's the antichrist! Who else could start fires with their mind?"

Several girls screamed, cowering cinematically.

"She's a witch! Burn her, burn her!"

"You're not really here," said Nona firmly, trying hard to get her bearings. She didn't know why she was suddenly having such a hard time with this hell. Somewhere beyond the pain and fear, this frustrated her.

 _"I'm right here,"_ snarled the underworld-thing, revealing its true form so suddenly that Nona, terrified, lunged for it on instinct. In the demon's wake stood the girl, young and blonde, her arm bent at an inhuman angle.

"Look what you did!" she cried, weeping.

"No," Nona gasped. "I didn't, I'm sorry... oh God..."

She ran for the stalls, pushing and pulling on each door but finding most of them locked. In the few that came open were things she had feared as a child. In one she found Pascow from _Pet Sematary,_ in another the little black dog from _Scary_ _Stories to Tell in the Dark_ ; in a third, the clown with the tear-away face from _The_ _Nightmare Before Christmas_. When she got to the very last door, it opened not to a toilet, but a scene from her parents' bedroom.

Her mother looked up at her from the teal satin sheets, tangled naked with a therapy patient half her age. "It's okay honey," she said calmly, looking up at Nona. "Dad knows."

Nona slammed the door shut. Exiting, she finally found her way out of the bathroom and into a long, winding hallway. Walking heavy with purpose, she felt as if the floors were cracking under her, the walls shaking with her rage. They weren't, of course. Everything still looked the same-the way the trash got swept up, the way the halls were decorated with sports posters.

But she, Nona, was different, overtaken now by a rage that seemed to burn beyond fire and become ice again. She felt as if she had claws now. She imagined swiping at the wall with them, leaving long five-point marks across football and color-guard and junior-varsity golf. Demon-cum-classmates appeared in her path, like goomba effigies in eight-bit video games, and because she knew that they couldn't truly die and weren't really children, she killed them. Because she could. They didn't make triumphant analog noises or dissolve into coins, though. They bled.

A small dark-haired boy, aged for preschool instead of middle school, appeared. Or perhaps, she thought, he had been there all along. He said nothing but surveyed Nona's rampage with wide, frightened eyes before scampering away.

Seeing her features in his was like getting the wind knocked out of her. All at once then, she was too sad and tired to be angry.

"Wait!" she called breathlessly after him as he ran into the ether. "This isn't me, don't be afraid of me! Please..."

He never called her mother. As the rage in her dissolved, pain swelled instead, nauseous physical cramping in her abdomen. It was so bad that she couldn't stand straight. She remembered.

"Mom..." she whispered, bending. "Mom, it just hurts so much..." She watched the small river of blood gush and pool around her white shoes. (It made no sense, of course, her tights weren't torn.) A chunk of tissue, unrecognizable as anything human, fell to the linoleum between her feet.

Relief rushed her, and with it, fatigue and then emptiness. She stumbled forward, seeing a doorway at one end of somewhere, awash in light.

As she dragged towards it, Nona thought that maybe Langdon was right. She had felt unseen by her parents as a child, and bullied by her peers in adolescence. As an adult, she'd had a miscarriage. These things hurt, but they were ordinary traumas that affected millions-billions, even-of other people. They weren't worthy of being turned into monsters in hell.

No, Nona realized, all her monsters came from the inside. They had just always been there. They _were_ her, and that was so much worse.

Exhausted, she stumbled out the small doorway and found herself in a busy outdoor market. In the dividing street, a jazz funeral procession was going by, similar to the ones she sometimes saw at home in New Orleans. The one difference here was that the marchers, with their instruments, had flesh as matte-gray as the top hats they wore, and their eyes were small red or yellow slits in their ashen faces. They stomped, clanging symbols and blowing long mournful sounds on trombones and trumpets and horns; and then, with the rattle of the hearse, were gone.

As the long black car rattled out of sight, Nona stepped off the curb. Slowly, achingly she lay down, supine in the street. She lay one arm across her forehead, sheilding her eyes from the hell-sun's odd gray glare. The same hymn was here, too. Instead of a girls-school choir, it now took the form of a singular female jazz singer from inside a nearby bar.

 _When the shadows of this life have gone_

 _I'll fly away_

 _Like a bird from these prison walls I'll fly_

 _I'll fly away..._

The woman's voice was so unspeakably sad that Nona finally allowed herself to cry a little. She watched shoes and hooves clomp by, unconcerned with her, as several tears clouded her vision and rolled sideways down her cheeks.

One pair stopped. Through the blur of tears in her eyes Nona thought she recognized Papa Legba's gray dreadlocks. The younger of the pair came close and stood over her. He had Langdon's dark-blond hair, but Nona's vision was too foggy to make his face out. It wasn't as if she would have recognized it, anyway.

He stared down at her for a few seconds, then held out his hand. She sensed so little malice in the gesture that she might have taken it. But before she could decide, the dreadlocked man was grabbing the blond one by the arm and hurrying him away.

It was then that the chapel appeared-or perhaps Nona just noticed it-there at the dead-end of the crooked street. It was an unassuming little building, gray and compact, with an old-fashioned steeple. But Nona recognized a certain familiar grief radiating off of it, grief that she hadn't sensed so strongly since the first time she stood at the Montgomery Mansion's door. She hadn't understood it then. The magnetic darkness inside her that pulled her in, the way that she could feel tragic places but not be hurt by them. The giddy thrill of painful things, and all that said about her.

The little chapel was just as horrid, but familiar, and its pull was such that Nona picked herself up from the ground, walked up to it, and let herself in.


	5. Some Bright Mourning

The small funeral parlor held dark-wood pews and beams, framing a ceiling frescoe of angels in a sky of Doctor Suess colors: The speaking pink of Cat-In-the-Hat snowstorms, clouds in mid-century aqua and Grinch-Stole-Christmas red.

A narrow aisle separated two sides, each containing seven small rows. Nona sat in an empty pew at the very back's right side.

The song was slower here, wordless, playing on an organ in the corner in an endless loop. The other patrons, shrouded faceless in black, didn't move or speak. The preacher, face blurred like edited TV, was droning on and on, a sermon about home.

 _But I can't go home,_ Nona thought. _I'll fly_ _away. But I won't now. I can't._

She stared ahead. The two benches flanking the pulpit, awash in silk floral and wire tinsel, were scrawled obscenely across with big, angry black letters: **Everything you love will die,** it said.

The letters blurred in Nona's line of vision. She'd never cried easily. She especially didn't want to do it now, but the very air was so thick with despair here that it left her no choice. She was reminded of the humidity she used to feel during summers on the East coast, visiting her grandparents as a child; the stale, burnt, huggable air. It seemed to hold her in place now, forcing her to sit when she wanted to run.

None of the other beings there, if they were truly beings, seemed to notice her presence. She covered her mouth with one black-manicured hand, surprised at the sharp way her own sobbing echoed off the chapel's walls. She again looked ahead to the pulpit, the tinsel. One generally would have expected crosses, but the shapes were all Satanic symbols.

 _No one,_ thought Nona. _No one else born has ever been as fundamentally pissed off as me._

She didn't know how long she wept before she heard the footsteps enter. She heard the pew creak and felt the weight settle beside her. She didn't need to look over. His presence seemed to enter rooms before him. It spoke for itself.

Michael clasped his hands in his lap, between his knees. He looked idly down at his shoes, then over at the dark-haired girl beside him. It probably should have pleased him to see her crying, but it didn't. It didn't exactly make him sad or sorry, either--that at least would have been _something,_ but Michael was mostly incapable. The nothingness was worse.

He looked past the preacher to the grandfather clock behind him: the moving parts inside, gold-plated stars and moon and sun. The alphabet letters among the celestial shapes spelled out before him: **You are alone.**

Finally now, after everything, tears came. Again he searched his jacket pockets for his handkerchief--perhaps a bit more desperately now--and again he found nothing. So Michael used his sleeve instead. It didn't do much good.

Nona turned. She drew a breath, taking in the face of the fragile-seeming young man who sat next to her. Angular, androgynous features. Heavy-lidded pale blue eyes.

He sniffled and looked over, his eyes meeting hers. He looked so horribly sad then that Nona forgot, for an instant, who he was. Michael quickly looked away again, wiping his eyes. Nona reached for his hand, surprised by the desperate ferocity with which his fingers laced with hers. She put her other hand atop them.

A thick tension settled over her. Even through the disorienting sadness hung the distinct sense that she was playing with fire. The boy clutching her hand, mere inches from her, wasn't boy at all; he was animal, predator, demon, lies made flesh. He wept, but that could mean anything. Nothing. He could turn and devour her very soul just as quickly.

As if sensing this, Michael shrugged his hand away and leaned into both of his, hunching his shoulders and sheilding his face. A sob escaped him, so childlike and pitying that Nona forgot to cry herself. Her hand was a white moth, his hair golden flame.

"C-can I?" he choked out, slumping to lean into her. As if somehow possessed, Nona thought of Constance then. "...May you..." she muttered, more involuntary statement than question. She closed her arms loosely around him, cradling his head to her chest.

She held him--the dark-dark, son of hell--and played idly with his hair while he cried. Her own tears dripped into it, clinging like diamonds in that famous golden floss.

When he pulled away he sat a little further from her than he had before, clutching her hand across the pew from an arm's distance. For several minutes neither spoke, still moved by the chapel's mournful song of home-lost.

Finally Nona sniffled, brushing her cheeks with the back of her hand. "You know, I never really did this with anyone before," she said thickly. "I never held hands with my mom while we both cried at a movie. God, I'm so fucking lonely..."

She could hear Michael breathing, stutter-stop, but he didn't say anything.

She gave a small laugh. "And now it's happening, and of _course_ it's with you. Of fucking _course_. Who else?"

"Do you wish that it wasn't me?" If he was hurt or angry, Nona couldn't detect it. He sounded congested from crying, but the question was matter-of-fact.

"No," she said, surprising even herself with the force of her voice. Her hand enclosed his more tightly. "No, I think it's perfect. I wouldn't have it any other way."

Michael sighed. Reluctantly he used the sleeve of his free arm to mop his face again. "I'm hungry," he said abruptly, dropping her hand and getting up. "I'm sorry, I just really need to eat something right now."

He walked to the small buffet table at the far right wall and dug unceremoniously into the offerings there. He ate politely but voraciously.

After a minute Nona joined him near the buffet. "I'm sorry," she said, "about the woman who took care of you. If I'd been involved at all I would have advised against it, you know? I wasn't even there when Cordelia..."

"--You have to try this," Michael cut in, between bites of a concoction that resembled watergate salad. "It's so good."

Nona kept her distance from the food. "Why were you crying?" she asked.

Michael turned. "Because I'm sad," he said plainly. He looked at her as if he thought the question was dumb.

Nona averted her gaze. "Me too," she muttered.

Michael took a moment to examine the young woman. She certainly _looked_ sad. The black makeup smudged under her eyes and the bloodstains on her white shoes leant her a tragic air that appealed to him. Her hair was cut similarly to his, which he liked, though Nona's was straighter and darker. Michael imagined himself pulling it. He noticed that her black tights had a small rip at one knee. He liked her legs, too, he decided, and the fact that she wore a short dress. That was nice.

"I can tell," he said. His voice, so young and choked with tears moments earlier, seemed to grow lower and slower now. He advanced until he was mere inches from her. To say he looked down into her face wasn't quite correct; in her low heels, the two were practically eye-level.

"I can _taste_ your sadness," he whispered, "and it is... utterly captivating." His face was close enough to hers that she could see the tear-stains on his cheeks. Those, and the ones on his sleeve, should have made him less formidable, but they seemed to have the opposite effect. Suddenly Nona could think of no power rawer, none more masculine, than unrestrained feeling.

"The darkness in you..." he continued. Heady with sudden desire, as if the very room were drugged, Nona placed her hand on the side of Michael's waist. He gave a small gasp, his voice suddenly edged with adolescence again. "What if I told you I thought you were beautiful?" he asked.

She kissed him. Time felt slow and drunken, bizarre and intense, and in its haze Nona forgot everything. Her knees bent and Michael leaned forward, catching her. His mouth tasted like lime Jello and below that, the salty tang of tears. Their chests pressed together and Michael could feel where her dress-front was wet with the morbid, starving remnants of his heart.

With a clang and the crash of several dishes falling, he had her beneath him on the table. Grasping at him, Nona complied without resistance or protest. Only when her dress hiked over her hips, and she felt Michael's cold fingertips at her tights' waistband, did she come to her senses.

"Stop," she breathed suddenly. "...Michael. We can't."

"Why not?" he demanded.

"We shouldn't," she insisted, struggling to think clearly. "Not here."

"Why?" he repeated, but his annoyance was interrupted by the sound of Nona scooting abruptly backwards and away from him. She pulled her dress back down over her thighs. He turned, sheilding the girl on instinct.

The black-shrouded beings, mere extras until now, had taken sudden notice of the pair and were advancing upon them. Nona didn't understand their croaking, garbled speech, though she could sense it as strongly malevolent.

But Michael understood.

"What the hell's their problem?" she demanded.

Michael spread his arms out at his sides, his body tensing. "They're pissed at us," he answered.

"Why?"

"Because this... place. This is a hot spot. There are lots of them down here. Rage, vice, gluttony. This particular one is despair. We subverted it, and that's not supposed to happen."

"What... how?"

"By supporting each other." Michael grabbed a large, serated bread knife from the table and held it at his back long enough to turn back to Nona. "Despair becomes consolation when it's shared, Nona. Jesus, did your parents like, never hug you? I'm the literal antichrist and even I know this shit."

He turned back to the veiled creatures. "Don't come any closer," he warned. "In my father's name, I _will_ hurt you."

One being lunged at him, causing Michael to stab it in the chest with the knife in his hand. The room shook around them. Michael's fingers curled. The rest of the small mob's necks cracked spontaneously, turning at unnatural angles until they fell to the floor in a still heap.

He turned back to Nona, extending his hand to help her down from the small table. "Come on," he pressed when she hesitated. "Before they come back to life."


	6. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes

**a/n: Sorry for taking forever to post a new chapter! I have a lot on my plate, but I will do my best to post as regularly as I can.** **As for this chapter itself, I am complete trash for a million different reasons. I can't really say I'm sorry.**

* * *

The billboards all watched over them like factory-made gods. Their surroundings could have been the hills and valleys, the over-and-underpasses of any major city if not for the eerie fog and the billboards' content. The beings who played and drank and ate and sprawled across the oversized images, selling sex, had crayola-colored skin, extraneous appendages, animal parts. Cat ears, octopus arms. Hooves at the bottom of bikini-legs.

Despite all this, something about the images' surreal perfection made Nona feel like earthly billboards always did. She found herself suddenly conscious of each human angle in her face and chipped flake of nail polish on her hands, as if she didn't measure up. And yet...

"It feels different now," she said to Michael. "Like it's actually kind of pretty here."

He looked at her through a mist the color of winter fog and headlights. The sky above him was gray, causing a slight halo effect above his blond hair. "That happens," he said, matching her stride. "Once you master this place, it mostly behaves for you."

Michael had just now achieved said mastery himself, but of course he didn't reveal this. There was something particularly humiliating about it, as if he'd gone to teach a class on something only to be stumped by a foundational question.

He outran the thought by walking a bit more quickly. His stomach felt funny and he wondered if Nona caused that like she seemed to cause nosebleeds. No, he decided, it was probably all that junk funeral food. Usually Michael made himself throw up after such unhealthy binges, but of course he couldn't do that now. So he just kept walking.

"Here," he said, coming to the spot he'd set out for. "Look." Nona stopped beside him at the edge of the hill and surveyed the underpass. It was lushly green, calling to mind the foliage of the Pacific Northwest, with winding paths through it. Dotting the area were twinkling light-up signs showcasing the illustrations and descriptions of various mythical creatures.

"It's amazing," Nona breathed. "Pegasus... Hippocampus, Centaur..." Though she was loathe to admit it, she'd been a bit of a horse girl in childhood. So her eyes drew first to the equine beasts.

Michael nodded excitedly. "Yes, and there's the Chimera, and the Manticore, and oh, the..."

"What is that one?" Nona asked, brow furrowing as she pointed to a terrifying leopard-spotted creature with seven heads. Even as an illustration, something about it made her uncomfortable and full of dread.

"That's the beast from the sea," said Michael, pleased. "He's my favorite."

Nona stood silent for a moment, listening for wind tunnels and jet planes.

"You said you were sad," she said finally, turning to Michael. "Why?"

"I don't have to tell you everything, you know," he replied, turning from the overpass and resuming his walk.

This sudden coolness wounded Nona more than she cared to admit, so she countered it with more stregnth of her own. "No," she countered, catching up to him, "and _I_ don't have to be here. I can ascend back, which I'm going to have to do soon anyway. If I'm going to follow you, I need to be able to trust you."

Michael sighed. "When Cordelia... punished me," he still couldn't bear to say out loud what had really happened, "...she really took everyone. Okay? Everyone left who I loved, or who was on my side, or who hadn't betrayed me... all gone." There was a catch in his voice, but he swallowed it. "And so I thought, you know, at least I still have hell. At least I still have my father. But it didn't exactly... work out that way. Apparently my father is the _trial_ _by fire_ type. No one gets special treatment down here, not even me. It makes a person feel pretty alone, you know?"

 _But you're not a person, you're a monster_ , Nona thought.

"I'm sorry," Nona said, taking his hand. They walked the rest of the way in silence, malevolently guarded by skyscrapers and billboards.

Eventually they came upon a large, empty structure that Nona quickly recognized: an ice rink. "Here it is," Michael said. "It's what I wanted to show you."

"An ice rink?"

"Yeah. Isn't it cool?" he asked, already lacing up a pair of skates from a small row of sizes. Before she could ask any more questions he was out on the ice, beginning to loop the parameter. He wasn't bad.

Nona located her size and put skates on, too, pushing off quickly after him. "An ice rink... in hell?"

"It's not hell, it's the underworld," he said. "The places behind the doors are hell." He skated out to the center of the empty rink, then stopped himself delicately. "Anyway, watch this."

She watched. He stood, eerily beautiful beneath the urban smog, looking taller because of the ice skates. His face was a mask of chilly concentration as he lifted one hand. Nona began to feel uneasy. A foggy black shadow flashed behind him in the vague shape of demonic wings, making the rust-colored halo of light around his head perverse in its irony.

Nona waited for the sound of falling buildings, for thick dust to choke her throat.

But instead a sound system flickered on from somewhere unseen. An old rendition of "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" echoed off the ice rink's open walls.

"I don't control which songs come on," Michael said, a little self-consciously, returning to loop the rink.

"You're a show-off," Nona chided, trying to control the tremor in her voice. She took a deep breath. "Where'd you learn to ice skate, anyway?" she asked. She did a small twirl and turned backward, skating that way so that Michael could face her.

"My grandma taught me, at the rink in the mall near our house," he said. "And you?"

Nona turned back around and glided ahead of him, her black dress fluttering around her thighs. "I did it competitively through middle school," she answered. "I remember at competitions, all our parents used to come and throw flowers and toys out on to the ice at the end of our routines. It was a thing."

"That's cute," Michael said. "You look like an ice skater. You have the hair."

"I knew her too, you know," Nona said abruptly.

"Knew who?"

"Your grandma. I knew all of them. I used to live in that house."

Michael's expression was unreadable. "Just tell me," Nona pressed. "I need to know... did you kill her?"

"How could you?" Michael muttered. He took off for the center of the rink.

Nona followed, stopping inches from where he stood with his arms crossed.

"How could you ask me that?" he repeated, pouting. "I thought you liked me."

"I do!" Nona blurted, retroactively realizing that it was true. "I just... I don't know... I definitely thought about killing her a few times."

To her relief, Michael joined her in laughing. For the first time she thought she saw a trace of Tate's face in his. "Yeah," he admitted. "Me too... But I didn't, to answer your question. Not directly, anyway." He didn't laugh at all at that last bit.

Nona felt herself sway on her skates, and Michael instinctively grabbed her by the forearms to steady her. Like her, he was tallish but somewhat delicately built. His wrists next to hers were just a little bit thicker due to his gender.

"I'm sorry," she muttered. "I'm gonna have to ascend soon."

Michael didn't let go of her. "What's going to happen then?" he asked. She knew exactly what he meant.

"I don't know," she admitted. She was feeling fainter by the second as the material world demanded her home.

"Then take me with you," he urged. "Please?"

"Michael, please... I can't... I can't even think right now," Nona said. It was true. The prospect of hashing out the future of her budding friendship with the antichist was impossibly overwhelming at that moment.

"Okay," he said gently. "Hey. Just one more minute, okay? Please? Here..."

When he was sure she was steady enough to stand alone, Michael again lifted a hand to the sky. His face went blank and his eyes rolled backward until a small, beautiful snow flurry surrounded them. The end effect was charming, Nona had to admit.

He broke concentration and grinned at her, flashing dimples. He then felt something wet on his upper lip and gingerly reached a hand up. Red.

"Sorry," he said, sniffing. "I just... you give me nosebleeds? I think it's something in your energy."

"Oh," she said, caught off guard. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay."

Nona placed one hand on the side of Michael's face and the other against his chest to steady herself. She thumbed the blood from his upper lip and looked barely-up into his eyes. She was about to be in what was quite possibly the biggest trouble of her life, in a lifetime that seemed to consist mainly of one instance of self-inflicted trouble after another. But she would deal with that when the time came. It couldn't hurt to use her last ounce of stregnth down here to kiss him.


End file.
